


What's so Fine (About Art)

by tisfan



Series: Bucky Barnes has Kittens [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Bucky Barnes Has Cats, Bucky Barnes Recovering, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers/Clint Barton (background), Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 05:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13287966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Bucky is now living with his boyfriend, Tony Stark. All well and good... until his agent, Steve Rogers, tells him he's been signed on for a book tour and is required to leave both boyfriend and his cats, behind to sit in front of hundreds of people... and talk about his novels...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monobuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/gifts).



> This story is a sequel to [Murder (or A Heart Attack)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11670936/chapters/26264961) and follows from Bucky who rarely if ever leaves his house to Bucky coping with severe agoraphobia and anxiety, without necessarily knowing what the problem is. It's also told from an outsider's POV; we never see inside Bucky's head here, just the physical reactions, which if you've ever been around someone with panic attacks, can be just as scary to the person witnessing them as the person having them.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said, keeping his voice deliberately cheerful.

“I haven’t made any progress on th’ new book, Steve,” Bucky said. Steve could hear him shifting the phone around until he dropped his cell on some flat surface and hit the speakerphone button. There was a clatter of keys; that probably meant either Bucky was working -- and therefore lying through his teeth about any progress on the new novel -- or he was on one of his various chat programs, talking with other authors and bitching because his fucking agent was on the phone and couldn’t give him a break.

(Steve might have known this was an actual fact because he might have signed on to one of these servers under his own pen name that Bucky didn’t know anything about. Steve’s pseudonym wasn’t nearly as famous as Jaime Buchanan, but Philip J. Coulson had his own dedicated little following among thriller novel fans. And he might have been online as Phil a few times, while Bucky was online as Jaime and listened to “Jaime” bitch about one Steven G. Rogers. It was kinda hilarious, and Steve was probably going to get creamed for it, eventually.)

“I didn’t call about that,” Steve said. Which was true. The book would end up in Steve’s hands eventually, and pushing would just make it worse. “I called, as your agent, to let you know that you’ve been nominated for the Hammett Prize, and that your publisher is calling on clause 81.b for promotions.”

“What?”

“You have to do a book tour,” Steve said, bluntly. “Fifteen cities, twenty-one appearances. Signings and Q&As. It’s all stand--”

Bucky hung up the phone.

Steve scrubbed at his face, sighed. There probably wasn’t much to be gained by calling back. Bucky’d been known to do things like stick his phone in the freezer if Steve was bothering him too much (with the result that at least twice he’d had to buy a new phone). Of course, Bucky’s definition of bothering was pretty loose and badly defined, and had included such things as Steve thinking that maybe Bucky should go see a doctor when he had pneumonia, or he should eat more than delivery pizza.

Things had gotten better since Bucky had made a friend in his neighbor. But Bucky was still a bundle of tightly-packed neurosis.

Steve regarded his phone for a long moment, then sighed. “Babe?”

Clint looked up from over the back of their sofa; he was binge watching netflix, eating Honey Nut Cheerios right out of the box and had been loafing on the couch all day. Clint’s job took him all over the country -- he was an FBI special agent, who worked breaching teams for hostage situations -- but when he was home, Clint was about the most disorganized, lazy SOB you ever wanted to meet, and Steve loved him desperately.

“Hmmm?”

“Gonna go over to Bucky’s and see if I can’t pry him out of his hobbit hole.”

“Okay. You need me to bust his door in?”

“Might,” Steve said. “But not today. Let me try negotiating before we kick in the walls. The cats might escape.”

Clint ruffled his dog’s fur, tugging on Lucky’s ear. “Good riddance,” he muttered. “Call if you need backup. An’ stop by the bodega on th’ way home. We’re out of juice. And ice cream. An--”

“Just text me a shopping list,” Steve said. He grabbed his wallet and keys -- which included a key to Bucky’s place -- and ran one hand over his short hair.

“Have fun with the murder hobo,” Clint responded, dumping more cheerios in his mouth.

***

Bucky answered the door wearing one sock, with a cat draped around his shoulders like a furry scarf, and pencils holding his hair in place. At least he had pants on. “Ug, no, Steve, go away.” He shut the door in Steve’s face.

Steve leaned on the door. “It’s in your contract, Buck, you have to go.”

“You’re my agent,” Bucky said. The way his words were muffled, Steve was pretty sure he was leaning on the door on the other side. When the two of them were kids together, back in Brooklyn, they’d been neighbors and they’d talked to each other through desperately thin walls in the exact same manner. “You’re s’posed to protect me from shit like this.”

“Come on, Buck, let me in, we can talk about this.”

“What’s to talk about? I’m not going on a book tour,” Bucky said. Steve heard him move away from the door.

Steve sighed, fished the keys out of his pocket, and let himself in. “You were doing so much better,” Steve pointed out as he got into the door, then had to use his weight and strength to keep Bucky from shoving him out of the apartment.

“I’m wearing pants,” Bucky said, as if that was a great accomplishment, and truly, it kinda was. Bucky had spent months wearing little aside from a bathrobe.

“I see that, pal,” Steve said.

“And Jarvis stole my other sock, so I can’t be faulted for that.” Bucky gave up trying to shove Steve out of the apartment, since one of the cats was trying to take advantage and sneak out the door.

He yanked Steve in, slammed the door, and then stalked off to the living room. Steve stood there for a few minutes, just breathing, before chasing his best friend and client down.

Bucky was petting an orange cat aggressively. Steve didn’t actually know which cat was which. Bucky and his boyfriend had like six of the damn things.

“You need to be more social,” Steve said.

“I am more social,” Bucky protested.

“Get out of the house more.”

“Do you see the cat, Steve?”

“Buck--”

“Steven. I am more social. I have a boyfriend and everything.”

Steve scowled. He wasn’t sure he liked Tony Stark all that much. The man was gone more than half the time on business trips and while he and Bucky had started cohabitating, it more meant that Tony had installed a couple of open doors between his condo and Bucky’s rather than either of them actually changing their living habits.

As far as Steve could tell, all Tony did was act as a sort of snuggle-partner slash babysitter for Bucky. Didn’t encourage him to get out more, didn’t make him leave the house. Provided a grocery delivery service that kept Bucky from even his infrequent trips to the bodega. Let Bucky stay in the house, typing up his novels, living in an imaginary world and pretending that everything outside the door was unimportant.

It just wasn’t healthy.

“You need more of a life than Tony Stark,” Steve tried.

“Tony’s more of a life than I had a year ago,” Bucky pointed out, and that was even true. Mostly.

“Buck--”

“How do I get out of it?”

Steve looked over Bucky’s shoulder -- he’d pulled up his publishing contracts from Little & Brown, at least, which meant for a change, Bucky actually knew this was serious. Breach of contract was a thing, and L&B wasn’t exactly shy about going after authors, even best-selling powerhouses like Jaime Buchanan.

“If you breach contract, you’ll be liable for any financial damages that L&B suffer; they’ve already arranged the tour, so there will be fees to pay for that. Plus they’ll probably terminate your contract, and it’s unlikely that they’ll take any more manuscripts from you. That’s at least two advances you’ll have to repay. You might end up blacklisted for being difficult to work with, which means it would be harder for you to publish again. It’s hard to say, sometimes another big house will try to snatch you up. But you’ll lose all rights to your last five novels for a while, and they’ll probably go out of print. You’d have to start over with some of the marketing.”

Steve was pretty sure Bucky didn’t want to do that; marketing shit was a pain in the ass, and as a best-seller, Little & Brown had taken over that. Previously, Bucky’d had to pay and work with a PR rep, and while it had only involved a few other phone calls and some money, Bucky’d gotten really squirrely about talking to people at all.

He knew -- he’d tried to tell L&B that Jaime Buchanan wasn’t a good fit for any sort of publicity tour -- that this whole thing was a bad idea, but… maybe it would be good for Bucky, if Steve could nudge him, just a little. The man was practically a hermit; crazy businessman boyfriend or not.

“What if I refuse the award? No award, no need for a book tour, right?”

“Bucky, this is a really great honor,” Steve said, wheedling a little. “Your work’s being recognized for the ground-breaking, game-changing prose that it is. You really should consider accepting. Look, I can probably cut down the Q&A’s. All you’d have to do is get dressed and sit behind a table for a few hours, sign your name a bunch.”

“Sleep in hotel rooms, away from my cats, and my bed. Be in strange cities where I don’t know where anything is? Have people touching my things. I… Steve, I _can’t_ do it. You know that.”

“Buck,” Steve said, “I don’t know that you’ve got a choice. Not a palatable one, anyway. Look, just… give it a try, okay? The first two are here in New York, you could be home in your own bed at night, and if it goes really, really badly, you can say you’ve got the flu, and we can delay or defer the rest of them.”

“Steeeeeeeve,” Bucky whined.

“Readers know, Buck,” Steve said, “that writers are all sorts of crazy and neurotic. It’ll be okay. No one will mind if you’re… eccentric. We’ll just get through this, and after this contract is over, I’ll make sure to put a clause in for no tours, okay? Promise.”

“I hate you,” Bucky said. “So much.”

“You love me,” Steve told him. “And you need me. And I’ll help you in any way I can, pal.”

“You gonna come with me, do this crazy shit?”

“I can be there for a few of them,” Steve hedged. He’d actually been hoping that Bucky was able to do the tour. Steve’s own pet project novel was lagging behind and he was up against a deadline. Getting Bucky out of the city for a while and into someone else’s care was supposed to give him time to get his work done. Keeping his writing life separate from his agent/editor life had seemed like a good idea at first, but lately, he’d been considering telling Bucky about it, just to be able to get some of his own damn work done.

“You got me into this shit, pal,” Bucky reminded him.

“I’ll do what I can,” Steve promised, and that was going to have to do.

***

Tony came home from a two-day workshop in Raleigh, North Carolina of all horrible places to be, to find his boyfriend curled up on the sofa, surrounded by blankets, pillows, and cats. U was peeking out at Tony from around Bucky’s toes, and Jarvis had already abandoned the pile to sniff at Tony’s suitcase, just in case there were wayward squirrels or something hanging out near the luggage.

Friday perched on Bucky’s shoulder, absently grooming his tangle of unwashed curls.

“Hey,” Tony said, softly. “You okay?”

 Bucky shrugged. “My publisher wants me to do a book tour.”

Tony blinked. “Okay. Is there a particular reason for that? I mean, you’ve got more than a dozen novels under your belt, why--”

“I’ve been nominated for a Hammett award,” Bucky said.

“Oh, that’s great, baby,” Tony said. He perched on the non-blanket and feline covered end of the sofa. “Congrats, really. That’s… like prestigious, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Bucky said. Bucky was practically melting into the blankets, all hunched over and tucking the edges in. Tony could imagine it, until nothing existed except eyeballs and sulks.

“And you’re not happy. I can tell. Genius-level IQ and keen powers of observation,” Tony said, teasing his boyfriend into a half smile. Tony was not, actually, usually very observant. Bucky’d painted the bedroom brilliant green one time, just to see if Tony noticed. He hadn’t. In further fact, the bedroom had been green for more than three months before Tony noticed it, and only that because he’d walked into the wall while carrying a cup of coffee and had to clean up.

“You know I don’t… go out. How th’ hell am I supposed to spend weeks on th’ road an’ sign books an’ make small talk with readers?”

Tony pressed his lips together, then said, “Well, we can do it like we do everything else. Break it into little bitty tasks. You know what they say. You can do anything--”

“--for fifteen minutes at a time,” Bucky said.

Tony knew that wasn’t really true, and the sorts of publicity tours that Bucky was going to have to do, he was going to end up talking for more than fifteen minutes, sitting in a bookstore for a few hours at a clip.

“Well, let’s start with preparing. What all will you need to do before you go?”

“Pants,” Bucky said, “an’ I probably need a hair cut.”

That much was true; Bucky’d come a long way from the half dressed guy who ate tinned apples because he couldn’t face going outside, but he still looked like a hermit.

“Right, okay,” Tony said, because making lists was part of what he did. Breaking down big projects into individual steps, tiny little responsibilities. “I can make an appointment for you to get a trim, and I can take your measurements, you don’t even have to leave the house to try on some nice slacks.”

“What if I fuck it up, Tony?”

“Fuck up what?”

“ _Everything_!” Bucky waved his arms around, disturbing his blanket nest and two of three cats. Friday never minded anything; honestly, Tony had taken her on the subway before and that cat was completely unfazed.

“Pretty sure you can’t fuck up everything,” Tony said. “I mean, that’s ambitious, even for me.”

Bucky uttered a little bark of laughter. Tony’s job affected a hell of a lot of people; they’d argued about it before, when Bucky was feeling inferior. “All I do is string words together,” Bucky had pointed out. Tony was personally of the opinion that Bucky’s job made people happy, while Tony’s job, as a weapons programs manager, got a lot of people killed, so there was that.

Bucky grumbled and sunk deeper into his blankets.

“What’s the worst that’s going to happen?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. Admittedly, that wasn’t a game that Tony liked to play. Bucky was too damn good at the _what if_ scenario, topped with severe anxiety and agoraphobia.  

“Humor me,” Tony said.

Bucky reached for his left arm, fingers brushing over the material of his shirt, where the shimmer, shiny scars were. “ _Train crash_.”

Tony flinched inwardly. “You don’t have to take a train,” Tony said. “There are airplanes and cars. And your chances of being in another serious accident are pretty damn remote. Most people are only in one serious crash in their entire lives, you’ve already had yours. The odds are in your favor, Katniss.”

Bucky scowled. “I gotta get on a plane. That means security. You know I don’t like people touchin’ me.” Bucky had a ton of surgical steel in his shoulder; he was sure to ping off metal detectors.

Tony nodded. “Travelling all the time, it has its drawbacks. Security theater. It’s all bullshit, you know that.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier t’ deal with.”

Tony rubbed his hand over his chin. “We could practice.”

“Huh?”

“Well, my company’s got a ton of security,” Tony said. “And you’ve never been there. I know a bunch of the guys who work there. You know that familiarity with a thing makes it easier to deal with. Come on over, we’ll get Happy to pat you down a few times. When you’re used to it, it’s easier. I mean, it’s never fun, but…”

Bucky shivered, curling even deeper into the blankets.

Tony was just about to take it all back; he knew his boyfriend had serious anxiety, and that he’d tried a few times and failed miserably to get much out of therapy. Bucky had quit going, hermitting more and more, and Tony knew that he’d made it that much easier for Bucky to find some sort of purpose in his existence. He was a best selling author, he took care of their cats, and he mostly kept the house clean.

There was a part of Tony that really wanted to smack the hell out of Bucky’s agent, the idiot PR person at his publishers, and everyone else who wanted to make the poor man conform to some ridiculous social norms, when it wasn’t necessary. Who the hell needed to be normal. “Hey, honey, it’s okay, we don’t…”

“No, maybe you’re right,” Bucky said. “I didn’t… I weren’t always like this. We can try. Steve says if it’s really terrible, we’ll tell ever’one I got the flu or somethin’ an’ cancel out.”

“Okay, then,” Tony said. “Tomorrow, then? Haircut first?”

Bucky swallowed hard, then nodded. “Okay.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Feel like I’m in one of those terrible makeover shows, Tony,” Bucky complained.

Tony barely glanced up from his phone. He’d had to reschedule two meetings and ditch out on a coffee-and-catch-up with his personal assistant, Pepper, in order to be at Charlotte's Coiffure. Tony didn’t mind, he really didn’t. Anything that would make it easier for Bucky, and what Bucky seemed to need was a friendly face.

On the other hand, a friendly face didn’t really need to watch his boyfriend with a chemical face-mask on and his hair done all over with little packets of tin-foil while the stylist attempted to “do something” with the mess of thick, dark hair that Bucky had been growing out for the better part of seven years because he hadn’t gone in for a haircut since before the train accident.

There was a lot, Tony was discovering, that his boyfriend hadn’t done in the last seven years.

And -- jokes about his lack of keen observation aside -- Tony was starting to feel just a little bit ashamed of the fact that he’d been less accommodating and more enabling.

Like back in the day, when Ty had kept encouraging Tony to drink and fuck and party, with very little concern for the consequences. Consequences that Tony was still dealing with as he was trying very hard to rebuild the legacy that his father had left him, and that he’d lost to Obadiah Stane’s maneuvering. Stark International had become Stane Incorporated.

Fujikawa, a Japanese shell corporation, had become the recipient for what was left of the Stark empire, and another… three or four years, maybe, and Tony would be ready to make that announcement to the world. The rebranding was already in the works, and Resilient’s stock would probably jump through the roof, once that was finished. In the meanwhile, Tony continued to lay low, to not trust much of anyone, and to do all his inventing behind the scenes, through the R&D at Fujikawa.

Tony knew what it was like to keep his head down, to not make a big stir, and to hate the world, and pretty much everyone in it.

Tony hadn’t even realized for a while who his attractive, if somewhat disheveled, neighbor was. And Bucky hadn’t cared at all who _Tony_ was. It was nice.

And Tony had kept Bucky as his very own, someone he didn’t have to share with the world.

Which might have been pretty damn selfish, come to think of it.

“You’ll always be gorgeous to me,” Tony told him. “Even if she puts soccer-mom highlights in your hair.”

“She’s not--” Bucky gaped at the woman who was painting his hair with some chemical crap and wrapping it up in foils. “You’re not doing that, are you?”

“Mr. Tony will make his jokes,” Charlotte said, brandishing the chemical brush at him. “I am putting subtle color in, Mr. Barnes. And some gloss. You must trust me. This is not super-cuts ten dollar hair.”

“Charlotte does my hair,” Tony explained. “She’s worth every penny.”

Also, Charlotte’s shop was for exclusive clientele. Her waiting list for new customers was usually at least six months out, but Tony had a special place in her heart, and when Tony promised her a signed copy of Jamie Buchanan’s newest thriller, she’d jumped at the chance. Her expression had been ridiculously pleased when Tony had tugged Bucky out from behind him; he was a challenge, and Charlotte loved a challenge.

Because she was as exclusive as she was, Charlotte’s shop was also very private. She did hair for the very rich and the very famous, people who did not want other customers gawking at them, or to be walked by and spotted through a window. She’d offered them fancy pastries and rich English tea while speaking with Bucky (although, honestly, mostly Tony) about what sort of image he wanted to project.

“You will place yourself in my hands and trust,” Charlotte had said, “and I will make you beautiful.”

Tony trusted her, and therefore, he was able to focus mostly on the notes that Pepper forwarded him, made a few executive decisions that would be funneled through Rumiko Fujikawa, who was the face of the company.

He listened with half an ear to Charlotte’s litany of what Bucky should do to take care of his hair, the products to use in it, how to trim his beard (Charlotte had been the one to originally design Tony’s signature goatee and teach him how to take care of it, because weirdly enough, growing a decent beard was actually harder than shaving and didn’t just mean don’t shave. Someone should tell most of the wanna-be hipsters that.) and what kind of skin regime he should use. “Just because society says men should not take care of their skin, that does not mean you should neglect it. Truly, only a few extra minutes, and you will look so very much healthier.”

She ignored Bucky’s protests and packed up a kit for him, along with a printout of what to do, and when. “Just accept that she’s right and move along, Bucko,” Tony said. “Charlotte does all my grooming regimen work.”

“Seriously?”

Tony turned, giving Bucky his full attention. “Look at my face for half a second, huh?”

“I look at your face all the time,” Bucky protested.

“I know, right? That’s because I’m gorgeous,” Tony teased. “And I’m gorgeous because Charlotte makes me that way. Have you not noticed how much time I spend in the bathroom?”

“Beauty may only be skin deep, Mr. Barnes,” Charlotte told him, seriously, “but no one is ever going to notice if you have an adorable pancreas. Trust me. Your inner self will shine so much brighter if you take care of your outer self.”

Bucky actually laughed, which Tony was totally going to count as a win. “How’m I supposed to remember all this?”

“That is what the instructions are for,” Charlotte said. “It will take some time, to get into the habit. But eventually, fifteen minutes, after your shower. It is not such a hardship.”

“At least you don’t need your eyebrows waxed,” Tony told him, all jokes aside. “Every time I have a clever thought, my eyebrow hair decides to grow straight out, like it wants to be Einsteinian or something. Curse of the creative mind, and Charlotte loves her tweezers just a little too much for my taste.”

Tony turned back to his emails and didn’t look up again until Bucky was coming out of the bathroom in the back. They’d gotten him a few outfits, especially for the book tour, and Tony had told him, quite firmly, to put one of them on after the cut, so he wouldn’t tarnish his new look by sticking to his eccentric recluse outfits.

And really, he should not have been unprepared; he’d seen other people go through a makeover before.

Bucky was pretty damn fine, even when he was tucked up in a tattered hoodie and over-large sweatpants that pooled around his ankles.

But in a dark blue polka dot shirt and a leather jacket, jeans that clung to those thighs like a wet dream, and his hair artfully arranged around his face, a hint of scruff beard left over… Tony’s boyfriend went from being relatively cute to holy fuck, someone get that boy a modeling contract.

“Jesus Christ, what did I do in a past life to deserve that,” Tony said.

Bucky, Tony noticed, did not look at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look at himself so hard it was painful.

Charlotte handed him the bag of grooming supplies. “You will take care to keep up with your regimen. I will not have all my hard work wasted,” she told him, quite firmly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bucky replied. He didn’t look at Charlotte, either. His eyes were firmly on the floor, studying his new leather oxfords that peeked out from under the cuffs of stylish designer jeans.

“Put it on my tab, Charlotte,” Tony said, then carefully laced his fingers with Bucky’s. “You okay, honey?”

Bucky was breathing too hard, chest heaving for air that wasn’t doing him any good. His hand was cold and Tony could feel him trembling.

“I can’t,” Bucky said. “I can’t do this, Tony, I can’t…”

Fuck. He was going into a panic spiral, and Tony knew all about those. “Come on, let’s get you someplace safe, okay? Out to the car?” Tony’d had a few public meltdowns himself; it was always, always easier to recover, if he could be alone, or with a trusted friend, when they happened. He gave Charlotte a significant look and she opened the employee exit for him, to let him lead Bucky out of her shop and away from any prying eyes. He tugged, lightly, drawing Bucky into the back hall. Charlotte had Tony’s driver’s number, she’d let him know where to meet them. God, Tony loved her. She was a life-saver.

“Safe.” Bucky said the word like he doubted any such place existed.

“Yep,” Tony said. “Here we go. Just in here, and we’ll be away from everyone else. It’ll be okay. I know, I know you’re having feelings that you don’t like right now. But breathe through it, baby. They’ll fade. They always fade.”

“I don’t know if I can do this, Tony,” Bucky said, voice wavering. “I don’t think I can be normal again. I’m just broken, I’m broken, I--”

“You’re having a hard time, I know,” Tony said, soothing, his hands petting down Bucky’s shoulders and arms. “Can you tell me what you’re scared of?”

Bucky stared at him, his gray eyes large and luminous with unshed tears. “I been at th’ bottom so long, if I fell again, it wasn’t gonna hurt so much. An’ I know you’re tryin’ to help, but you’re pullin’ me out, and Tony… Tony, I don’t want to fall again. Th’ bottom’s not so bad, when you’re used to it.”

“Oh, honey,” Tony said. He wanted to soothe and reassure and comfort and promise that he’d always be there, to catch Bucky. But no one could promise that. No one ever could. “I’m going to do everything I can to help you. And you know what? I learned some skills from my climb up, and that means that next time, if something happens… maybe I can catch myself. And maybe, you can do that, too.”

***

Steve wished he’d known Bucky was going to get a haircut before he’d had the book signing kit made up; a half dozen posters, plus two banner-stands, surrounded a man who looked nothing like his picture. That Bucky had been pestered and persuaded and eventually Steve had to take the pictures himself; of Bucky with his long hair pulled into a sloppy man-bun. Not quite looking at the camera, leaning against the wall outside his condo.

That man looked vaguely terrified, eyes averted, in partial profile, from the ribcage up, and uncentered. Steve had played with the lighting a bit until Bucky more resembled a spy’s handler passing along coded information rather than a recluse getting ready to bolt for the stairs and the safety of his condo.

The Bucky sitting in a cheap, not particularly comfortable chair, drawn up to a folding table covered with a blue tablecloth that dragged on the floor and dotted with books and some promo cards, looked like a B-list Hollywood actor. With his chin-length mahogany locks and just a hint of beard, like he’d been so busy partying for the last few days he’d forgotten to shave, Bucky looked like a completely different man. He wore a vee neck tee that showed off just the dusting of chest hair and clung to muscles that Steve had honestly forgotten that his friend had.

Except when Bucky looked up from the pad of paper he was scribbling on, Steve saw relief in those blue-gray eyes. “Hey, pal,” Bucky said. “Didn’t know if you were gonna make it.”

Steve attempted to be reassuring. “Clint had a thing,” he explained. “Got in late last night an’ I overslept.”

Bucky gave a knowing chuckle that sounded… so _ordinary_ that Steve was having trouble not staring. “Have a few of those myself,” he said. He flipped a page on his pad and scribbled again. “Tony’s work takes him all over the world, an’ he gets in on Tokyo time a lot. Good thing we both have jobs that don’t depend on us getting up in the morning, right?”

Steve’s mouth twitched. Sometimes he wondered if Bucky actually knew about Steve’s _nom de plume_ and was pretending not to, just to be able to call Steve out, later. “Something like that,” he said. “I like the new clothes, Buck.”

“Shhush, don’t call me that here,” Bucky said, glancing around with exaggerated concern, like they really were in one of Bucky’s spy thrillers. He scribbled something on his piece of paper, looked at it, flipped the sheet.

“What are you doing, _Jamie_?” Steve stressed the name ridiculously.

“Practicing,” Bucky told him, and turned the page for Steve to see.

He’d been signing his name, over and over and over again until writing Jamie Buchanan looked almost natural. Mostly a big J, and a scribble, and then a B and a longer scribble. It didn’t look much like Bucky’s actual handwriting, either, and Steve noted with a shock that Bucky was using his pen right handed.

“Practicing,” Steve repeated.

“Yeah, well, I’mma be here for hours,” Bucky said. “And my left arm hurts like fuck whenever I write for more than a few minutes, so… I mean, that’s what they made keyboards for, so crippled assholes like me could actually write, right?”

“You’re not crippled,” Steve hissed. He wasn’t going to comment on the _asshole_ part and the twinkle in Bucky’s eyes made note of that fact.

Bucky shrugged. “There’s no good pretendin’ like it didn’t happen, Steve,” he said. He took a small pill box out of the front of his too-tight jeans, stuck a little white pill in his mouth, and took a gulp out of the Jamie Buchanan water bottle in front of him. There were some of those to give out, or sell, too.

“What was that?”

“Anxiety meds,” Bucky said. He swayed a little bit in his chair, eyes fluttering closed. “Helps, a bit, when I start feelin’ squeezed in. Tony… made me go to the doctor, after I had a sobbing meltdown for gettin’ my hair cut.”

Steve didn’t stare, but it took a lot of effort. That was… huge. A bigger step than Bucky had ever taken to trying to reclaim his life. Steve chewed on the inside of his mouth for a bit, then said, “Well, I take back every nasty thought I had about your boyfriend, then.”

“You should,” Bucky told him, seriously. “Tony’s… Tony is the best thing that ever happened to me.”


	3. Chapter 3

Tony’s phone vibrated against the headboard; an annoying zzttttt zzttttt zzttt that resembles an angry junebug trapped in a pizza box, which was such an oddly specific metaphor and trying to remember why he’d make such a weird comparison was enough stirring around of the ol’ gray matter to wake Tony up, even if he was in goddamn Waikiki and on New York time.

Sometimes Tony thought his life would just be easier if he set himself up on Greenwich mean time and make the entire rest of the world conform to his sleep schedule. It’s not like he slept more than four to six hours on a good day, anyway. Surely, the rest of the world could accommodate him for a meeting or two.

What the hell time was it, anyway?

“Hmmmwhat?”

“Oh, sorry, Tony, I didn’t realize y’d be sleepin’, sorry.” The phone went dead in his ear.

There was that long moment where Tony could have just rolled over, stuffed his arm back under the not-quite-the-right-size hotel pillow and gone back to sleep. He might even have done that, for about two minutes or so, but then-- Bucky had sounded… upset. There was a catch in his breath and a quaver to his tone that had Tony’s heart racing with sudden worry.

He turned the light on with one flailing hand, got up to piss and wash his face, then sat down. It was not quite eleven at night in Hawaii, so, mathing that backward… Bucky had called him a little after 4am New York time, except Bucky wasn’t in New York, was he? Bucky was on a book tour and he was either in Chicago, or he was in Seattle. Tony wasn’t sure, but in either case, it was fuck o’clock in most of the Western Hemisphere.

Tony stabbed his index finger in the general direction of the callback button, put the phone on speaker, and flopped back on the bed. He was exhausted. Honestly, he didn’t think he could feel worse if someone dropped a car on him. Admittedly, Hawaii was a good mid-way point for the Japanese and American corporate officers to meet for --

“Hey, you didn’t have to call back, honey,” Bucky said. “I’m okay, I’m…”

“I’m awake,” Tony said, and that was only about half a lie. “What’s up?”

“‘M fine,” Bucky protested, but that catch was still there in his voice. “Jus…”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Bucky said with a bitter laugh. “I’m blaming you.”

Tony sighed. He shouldered a lot of blame these days and while he knew Bucky was mostly teasing, it just felt like his load was getting worse and worse. “What did I do this time?”

“Got me used t’ sleepin’ with cats,” Bucky said. “Feels weird. It’s been days…”

“Yeah,” Tony said, rubbing his eyes. The bed always felt too big without U in it, and these days, it was even worse, sleeping on half of a bed, where there was supposed to be someone on the other side. Bucky slept in the weirdest positions, making room for the cats to curl at the base of his spine, behind his knee, draped over one ankle. And Friday, who tended to sleep sprawled across Bucky’s face, licking his hair whenever she got anxious. “If you’ve got time, maybe you can drop by a pet store or a shelter and have a few minutes of kitten time?”

Bucky actually laughed at that. “Sounds like a good way t’ end up with a new cat.” Also, probably true. They’d gotten several cats since moving in together -- Tony’d managed to keep himself down to one, but U was a special case, and Tony had felt terribly guilty about leaving U alone all the time until Bucky had come into their lives.

“I miss you,” Tony told him. Sleeping even with extra hotel pillows was nothing like having a partner. Tony had always traveled a lot for work, but he’d never left someone behind, before Bucky moved in. Tony kept waiting for it to get better; to not have that ache in his chest, that constant looking around like he’d misplaced something. Surely he would get used to it, right? Eventually it wouldn’t hurt so much.

It still hurt.

Every single time.

Tony had begun to think it would never get better. He really needed to finish with this whole rebranding thing, so he could assign an executive officer to oversee west coast operations and just stay in New York.

At least, if things worked out the way he was predicting, he’d have his own company plane in the next three quarters or so, and then he could just _go home_ whenever the fuck he felt like it.

He wasn’t sure he could image what it was like for Bucky, who’d not left his _house_ much for the last several years.

“Miss you, too, Tony,” Bucky said, and there were the tears, Tony could hear them in the way Bucky’s voice got tight and the way his breath shattered in Tony’s ear.

“Hey, honey,” Tony said. His own throat ached, narrowed, until he felt like he was breathing through a cocktail straw. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’ll be over soon.”

“For you…” Bucky whined. Accurate, as far as it went. Tony was flying back to New York day after tomorrow (or was it tomorrow yet? Tony wasn’t quite sure. He hated time zones. It was definitely tomorrow in New York. Soon.) and didn’t have anything on the schedule for at least another month.

Bucky, on the other hand, had another two weeks of book touring, as Little & Brown dragged his ass all the way down the West Coast. Which meant Tony would end up going home to an empty condo, and you’d think as long as he’d been doing that before Bucky came into his life, that just the thought of having no one to greet him when he walked in the door was weirdly heart-breaking.

Tony sat up a little straighter in his hotel bed. It wasn’t like Tony’s job was dependent on being in an office. He could work anywhere that had a decent Wifi connection, or good phone reception. Even if the hotel didn’t have one, Tony could use his cellphone as a hotspot. Speaking of phones, he yanked his out and started drawing notes on the screen with a stylus. One of his personal favorite phone features, it had mostly learned his terrible handwriting and was his note-taking feature of choice. He could voice-dictate, too, if he was driving.

_See about hotels_

_Talk to pepper_

_Cost for flying?_

_Friday_

“Well, you know you can call me whenever you need to,” Tony told him. “Maybe, when I look less like something U dragged into the house, we can do some facetime chat.”

Bucky chuckled. “I’ve seen your bedhead before, baby.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony said, still jotting notes on his phone. “I’m using my phone right now--”

“Are you checking emails for work?”

“Not exactly.” Tony hedged. He didn’t want to tell Bucky his idea, in case things fell through or it wouldn’t be feasible. No sense having both of them be disappointed later. “Just thinking with my hands, you know how that goes.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “You’re cute when you’re thinkin’ real hard. Even cuter when I c’n get you to not think _at all_.”

“Why, Jamie Buchanan,” Tony said, using his I-am-shocked-and-appalled voice, “are you attempting to initiate phone sex with me at… what bloody time is it, anyway?”

“‘Round three in the morning where I am,” Bucky said. “I think? Why, you need help figurin’ out what to do with your hand?”

Tony snuggled a little deeper into the pillow. This could be fun. “I know my way around, but you could talk me through it, if you wanted to.” He let his voice drop into that deeper, sexier tone. Bucky was sometimes really shy, but at the same time, Tony had actually read the man’s books, which usually included at least one sex scene, and he had a way with words. If Tony could prod him into it, it could be very exciting.

And a hormone dump would help both of them relax.

“You want me t’ peel off your imaginary clothes,” Bucky asked him, “or just assume you sleep as naked in a hotel room as you do at home?”

Best idea ever.

***

Book’Em Mysteries was wide and well lit, neither of which Tony had expected, based on the name of the shop. Catering exclusively to crime fiction and mystery novels -- and the people who read and wrote them -- Tony had expected it to be small, grubby, and have a lot of dark corners for unexpected things to happen in… that being said, the history itself was fascinating.

Some ten months after opening, the shop was part of a crime. An arsonist burned the shop down. Tony shuddered at the thought of all that dry paper and how quickly the place would have gone up. The shop was insured and was able to use the insurance payout to move a few blocks down the same street. But, and the irony was killing Tony, really, it was, the arsonist had never been caught.

Tony peered in the window -- the glass was painted with the store’s logo, a pair of handcuffs replacing the O’s in Book’Em -- and spotted the large easel that announced his boyfriend’s guest signing for the day. And not that he hadn’t seen pictures of the various marketing swag that Rogers had been setting up, but Tony found it just a little disconcerting to nearly walk into a life-sized, cardboard cut out, of Bucky.

“I am not going to ask what people do with these, I’m really not,” Tony muttered. He took a few steps backward and nearly stepped on a shop worker.

“Can I help you?” the woman inquired. She was cheerfully sunny, and dressed like a coffee-shop poet. Her face registered nothing but delight to assist a customer, although her eyebrows knitted together enough to suggest that maybe Tony’s mental problems were beyond her capacity. Her nametag read “Darcy” and Tony wondered if that was her actual name, or a literary character of which she was fond. Hadn’t Tony listened to a rant from Bucky not all that long ago about a “sequel” to _Pride and Prejudice_ called _Death Comes to Pemberley_ , which was both an affront to the original romance novel in specific and to murder mysteries in general.

Tony had gleefully bought a BluRay copy of _Pride, Prejudice and Zombies_ , just to watch his boyfriend go up in a puff of literary indignation.

“Um, I’m looking for… er... Jaime?” Tony asked. He almost asked for _Bucky_ , but he wasn’t sure Bucky had told anyone his real name.

“The guest author’s speaking engagement starts in an hour,” Darcy informed him, crisply. “In the meanwhile, we have a whole display--”

“I know people probably tell you this sort of thing all the time, but my name’s Tony Stark, and I’m his boyfriend. Could you tell him that I’m here?” Tony knew that look, all right, and he was going to be lucky if he didn’t get tasered as a stalker fan. He was about to whip out his phone and start texting when Friday managed to finish clawing a hole in the side of the cat-carrier Tony had bought for her.

“What the--” Darcy yelled, stumbling as she backed away. Friday pushed her face out through the opening and yowwed plaintively, then, like some sort of optical illusion, wormed the rest of the way out and bolted for the back of the shop.

Tony didn’t quite dare put his hand on the associate -- she really looked like the sort who would taze him and just leave him drooling on the carpet -- but he did thrust his arm out to block her path. “It’s okay, I know where she’s going,” he said.

“Yeah, to use the magazine rack as a litter box--” Darcy snapped.

“Oh, my god!” came a familiar voice from the back of the store. “How th’ _hell_ did you get here, baby? Oh, yes, good girl, come here, yeah.”

Tony just raised his eyebrows, pointed at himself. “Boyfriend.”

“Asshole,” Darcy muttered. She probably didn’t mean for Tony to hear that, but it was okay. Point made, he strode back toward the sound of Bucky cooing over their cat.

Bucky had Friday draped around his shoulders like a furry scarf, poking her nose in his ear and purring like a blender on the fritz. “Oh…” He stopped walking and just stared, like Tony was growing an extra head.

“Hey honey,” Tony said. He held his arms out, inviting Bucky in.

“Oh, thank god,” Bucky said, and he almost crushed the air out of Tony completely. “Oh, Tony, oh, god. I was _worried_ , you ass. How th’ hell did you get Fri here?”

“Flew,” Tony said. It wasn’t like he didn’t have the money; an extra first class ticket for a cat that was perfectly happy to stay in her cat-carrier for the entire trip? Not even a big deal.

“Not like our cats don’ have a history of runnin’ away at inopportune moments,” Bucky said.

“I don’t know,” Tony responded, nuzzling at Bucky’s jaw, ignoring that Darcy was glaring and tapping her foot at them. “I think U ran away at exactly the right moment.”

“What are you even doing here?” Bucky exclaimed, but it was clear he didn’t really need an answer immediately, because he was making it impossible to talk by kissing Tony every time he tried to speak.

When Tony got his breath back, he finally managed a, “working vacation. I talked to your PR person, and got the all clear from the bookstores you’ve got left. Yay, California. You can keep her with you at your speaking engagements. There’s a waiver on there in case she destroys anything, but don’t worry, I can cover that part if she pees on anything. Don’t worry, though. Pep’s gonna feed the rest of the babies until we get home. And you know me, I can work anywhere. I thought we’d keep you company for the rest of the tour.”

Bucky inhaled, sharp, and buried his face against Tony’s throat, shaking. “Oh. Oh, god. Oh, you are the best boyfriend _ever_.”

“Hey, that’s usually my line,” Tony mock-protested. “Come on, get it together, honey. Your mascara’s gonna run.”

“Asshole,” Bucky said, pushing him lightly.

Tony pretended not to notice Darcy looking vindicated.

“Oh, hey,” Bucky said. “Darce… this is Tony, my boyfriend. And this is my girl, Friday.”

Tony gave Bucky a suspicious look. “Are you making a bad joke out of my cat’s name?”  
  
“Only if it’s funny,” Bucky said, deadpan.

***

“Hey, _Jamie_ ,” Steve said. He pushed past the few remaining readers who were waiting with their copies of their books in hand. It was the last signing of the tour and they were home again in New York, so Bucky looked a hell of a lot better than he had the last time Steve had seen him. And he had a cat draped around his neck. Which was becoming a signature look. “You made the papers.”

“Steven,” Bucky said. He didn’t look away from the reader, an older woman with a beehive-style hairdo, who’d been talking earnestly for the last ten minutes about a plot hole in _Not Without You_. “You’re interrupting Mrs. Parker, here.”

Steve rolled his eyes and waited with poor grace, until she took her copy and left. He spread the paper down in front of Bucky, showing him the black and white of him signing books, cat tucked under his arm, sleeping.

 ** _Brooklyn Boy Serves up Mysteries, with a side order of Cats_**  
\-- Jan VanDyne

_The line was literally out the door to New York native, Jaime Buchanan’s book signing this weekend. We stopped by BookNook to check out Brooklyn’s own famous author and his new book, On the Ropes._

_Fans of all ages waited patiently to get their books signed, and more importantly, to get a peek at the reclusive author and his pet cat. Ever since Man on the Bridge came out, readers have been fascinated by an author who dotes, so much, on his cats. Imagine all of our joy when Buchanan was accompanied for the later half of his book tour by one of his feline companions._

_Mr. Buchanan patiently scrawled his signature, had a few words with, and a smile for, every single person who came out to wish him well, express admiration for his work, and pet his cat._


End file.
